Once upon a time, there was a girl.

A girl of fire and venom, too damn smart for her own good. She was dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, a dark mind ready to overflow with the shadows that overstay their welcome. She was a pained girl. An empty girl.

Once upon a time, she was saved. It was by the man with the silver beard and eyes like telescopes, ready to venture into the farthest galaxies this girl held in her mind, ready to mend dying stars and ready to seize the black holes. He was the same man, in fact, that saved the girl's father and mother all those years ago. A mirror of her parents. A parallel of generations.

He saved her, brought her to the new family in which she'd come to love more than her own life, she'd meet the strongest Boy Who Would Never Die, an immortal soul hellbent on staying on earth. She'd find lovely friends and lovely uncles and aunts and she'd find the dark man who loved a girl with a flower name, a man struck as the villain when he's truly to only one who'd been trying to save them all. She'd find the old man with the silver beard to be her only parent. She'd find her true grandfather.

But once upon a time, this girl was destined to martyrdom. She had always known, deep down, that that was what she was born for. To mend the things her family had broken. To die so everyone she loved could live.

So this girl, destined to die before she had ever even lived, made more sacrifices than any soldier. She vowed to die for the Boy Who Would Live, the Boy Who She Loved. She vowed to die just as Dumbledore had: die for the fight which needed her blood, die to protect everyone she had found to love. She had accepted her fate as an inevitable truth. She did not mourn the life she will never live.

So, once upon a time, this impossible girl was to meet her end. It was the four of them: Harry Potter, Vera Beauregard, Tom Riddle, and herself. The four it had always been. The four that it will always be.

The story was to meet an end. The four of them, together.

Tom Riddle watched his wife with his maroon eyes as they saturated more and more with the brown of his Old Eyes. 

No one spoke for quite awhile. The silence of hesitance, of anger, of sadness.

"There's nothing left to save you," said Diana Riddle softly. Once upon a time, she was destined to die. Once upon a time, she might take her father down with her. "There are no more Horcruxes. Only one of the three of us can live, Tom. I promise, it will not be you."

Voldemort raged beneath his browning eyes. "Oh yes? Promise me, who of you will die? Only one can live, after all."

Once upon a time, a girl vowed to die for the man she loved.

"Tom. . ." whispered Vera. Her eyes were so pained, so solemn. "What have you done?"

It was rhetorical, a much bigger question than it sounded. It held every question she could bear to think of.

"I have taken the world for you," he said lowly, take a step toward her. Diana and Harry raised their wands in warning. Vera did not even flinch.

"You have taken the world for power," she said. "I never wanted the world, Tom," she whispered. "I wanted you."

Voldemort looked stricken. He took a step back.

"You have done this for nothing," said Diana. "You have killed countless of innocent people for nothing. Even you will be punished, Tom. I won't let you escape this."

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry. "You won't be able to kill any of them, ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you back in the forest---"

"But you did not!"

"---I meant to, and that's what did it. I've done what my mother did, They're protected from you. Haven't you noticed how all of the spells you put on them are binding? You can't torture them. You can't touch them. You don't learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?"

"You dare---"

"Yes, I dare," said Harry. "I know things you don't know, Tom."

"We know many things that you do not," said Diana. Would you like to hear some?"

He did not speak. Finally, he straightened. "Is it love again?" he jeered. "Dumbledore's favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, though love did not stop him falling from the Tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter---and nobody seems to love you enough to run forwards this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now when I strike?"

"I will."

It was a whisper, but she meant is as adamantly as she would if she had shouted. Her eyes were strong, hard like cold steel. She did not break under the gazes of everyone who watched her.

"Don't you understand, Tom?" she said, slightly louder this time. She took a step forward. "Don't you understand that this is it? That even you, Lord Voldemort, are going to be conquered by love? Love has made even you weak, Tom Riddle, and love will also be the thing to finally break you. It will be my love that will save Harry Potter from you, and it will be my love that will kill you."

She paused, dropping her voice down to a whisper. "It's just you and me Tom. You and me till the end."

Harry stood, shocked. "What are you doing---?"

"You think you will kill me?" Tom Riddle spat. "You think you know more magic than I do? Than I, Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

Diana laughed, and he seethed. "You think he didn't dream of it? Of course he did. He could have done anything he ever wanted. But he's smarter than you, Tom. He knew that seeking power would be his downfall."

"You mean he was weak!" yelled Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

"He was the strongest person I've ever known," said Diana measuredly. "He was more clever than you'll ever be. He was a better man, a better wizard, than you could ever dream of."

"I brought the downfall of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did," said Harry. "But you were wrong."

For the first time, the crowd stirred with curious gazes. Whispers broke out for a moment before ceasing at once.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort spat with a fury unlike any. "He decays in the marble tomb on the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore's dead," said Harry. "But you didn't have him killed. He chose his own matter of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant and your daughter."

Diana drew a breath. How did he know?

"What childish dream is this?" said Voldemort.

"Severus Snape was never yours," said Diana quietly. "Snape was ours from the moment you hunted down Lily Potter."

"You never saw him cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?" asked Harry. Voldemort did not answer.

"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry. "The same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time they were children. You should have realized. He asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"

Diana looked back at Harry. They made eye contact, and his eyes were heavy with knowledge. He knew everything now.

Once upon a time, a girl worked with the silver-bearded man and the dark-haired one. She spent nights with them in the silver man's office, planning and thinking and talking of the End. She came up with the idea for Snape to kill Dumbledore, to ensure the Dark Lord's trust. 

"He desired her, that is all," said Voldemort, though slightly unsure of himself.

"Think about what you're saying, Tom," Vera Beauregard pleaded quietly. The hall drew in a breath. "Think of what you're saying, think of what you're saying of love--- did you not love me, then? Was I just your whore, if love is so weak?"

She spat the word with an unusual anger. Voldemort's eyes flickered as she spat the word, a type of unusual softness.

"Of course not," he told her. "We were different, we were destined---"

"And you loved me. And I loved you, Tom. Even you are not exempt from this," she said. His eyes swirled with conflict. "So it all comes down to this, Tom. Will you do what is right?"

The finger's around his wand twitched weakly. His brows furrowed. His eyes swirled with sienna.

"This is it, Tom," said Diana. She took a step forward. Harry called her name in protest. "It's just you and me. Till the end."

Voldemort raised his wand. Vera shouted, but he did not listed.

"You don't have to do this, Tom!"

"Diana, what are you doing?"

Once upon a time, a girl and her father faced each other with eyes that spoke of death and murder. The Snakes, they were.

All four of them raised their wands at the enemy.

"Diana, get back!"

She would not.

Then, once upon a time, the girl opened her palms willingly and let her wand fall to the floor.

And in the soft sound of her fallen wand, they all shouted their curses, and the girl stood with no weapon, her eyes as hard as cold steel.

Once upon a time, a girl was saved by a silver-bearded man. She loved and lost and cried, screamed at the sky, prepared her heart for the time she knew it would stop beating.

Once upon a time, a girl was destined to die.

Like fireworks, the spells hit their targets.

Once upon a time, a girl dropped her wand in sacrifice.

There were screams, and soft, feminine hands were holding hers.

Once upon a time, a girl was saved by a silver-bearded man. Today, he was not there. He had died the same death as she would. He was not there to save her this time, thankfully. She had to do this. She needed to do this.

So, once upon a time, the pained and impossible girl was destined to meet her end.

A bolt of green light hit her squarely in the heart. Her eyes flickered off, like static.

The broken and impossible girl, Diana Riddle, died.